Plumage
by ncfan
Summary: He catches a bird flying to him in the night.


I own nothing.

* * *

He's thinking of her when he sees it. Thinking of Elwing, pale and silent and wraith-like, glimmering in the dark. Thinking of their sons as well, though Elros and Elrond are less real to him than the names of the dead. It's dark, the dead of night, on a peaceful sea. The others are all asleep, but Eärendil can not be persuaded into slumber, not even by the gentle rocking of the ocean.

How long has it been since he last saw them now? Two years? Three? A lifetime, even? What must his children look like now? Do they even remember him at all? For every moment that he spends, staring up at the stars, he struggles between the twin desires, pulling him in different directions. One tugs him toward the elusive road to the Undying Lands. The other whispers to him and begs him to come home, come home to his lonely wife, to the sons who are forced to live without their father.

This seems like a thankless task, at times.

Unable to sleep, Eärendil stares on the stars, counting them, a means to pass the time he adopted when he first set out on his voyages. It's customary for him to fall asleep sometime around the three-thousandth star he counts. Tonight, custom has failed, and Eärendil can only stare blearily at the sky, wishing for sleep, and finding it nowhere.

A faint glimmer appears on the horizon.

Eärendil frowns and stares at it, clambering up to his feet. There comes, like a flickering cloud, a white glimmer on the horizon. It gleams in the night like a beacon, and Eärendil watches it, transfixed. He could swear he recognizes that light…

It comes ever closer, like a star streaming down to earth, flying over the waves of the ocean. Brighter and brighter it shines, so bright that Eärendil fears he will be blinded, but he can not turn his eyes away.

The glimmer is close now, so close that Eärendil can see its reflection upon the dark water. He can make out wings. Is it a bird, then? A bird that can shine so brightly in the darkness that it appears as though a star upon the earth?

Before he's really aware of it, before he can move to dodge aside, the bird collides with his chest. "Oof!" Eärendil lifts his hands to catch it and hold it in his arms, frowning. "What's this?" he murmurs to himself, looking the bird over.

It is a large white bird, with wonderfully soft feathers, unlike any other he has seen. Not a seagull, though it has the long wings of one, and not a swan, though its neck is long. Its neck…

Around its neck is something Eärendil recognizes very well.

Hands shaking, he reaches to unclasp the necklace around the bird's throat, only to be pecked sharply by the exhausted creature, who eyes him beadily. Eärendil meets the bird's stern gaze, unnerved, for a few long moments before the bird rests its head against his chest and closes its eyes. But even in such a state, Eärendil can still see the necklace around the bird's throat, and the dazzling jewel set into it. The Silmaril.

When last Eärendil saw the Silmaril, it was around his wife's throat. Elwing wears it nearly constantly; that much he knows. Is this bird supposed to be some sort of messenger of Elwing's, and the Silmaril a gift?

_That makes no sense. _Elwing always wears the Silmaril. She is attached to it, so deeply attached that to attempt to sunder it from her would be a foolhardy effort indeed. Eärendil pities the fool who would try to part Elwing from her Silmaril. She would not send it out of her sight, not for any reason that Eärendil could fathom. He looks at the bird asleep against his breast, and his heart begins to sink.

But all this can wait until morning, when he has finally had some rest and can look at the situation with a fresh mind. Eärendil takes the bird down to his cabin, and lays it down on his bed, before returning to the deck of Vingilot and finally finding rest this night.

The morning comes.

Eärendil returns to his cabin, and shouts with fright to see wife lying in his bed, near to death with exhaustion, clutching the Silmaril in one shaking hand.


End file.
